If anybody is to get my Bible after me, I hope they'll treat it well and mind my pencil marks. Every man's road to Heaven is different not that there's only one road to Hell, but that's neither here nor there.

The Warren's a desolate and a funny enough place for a stranger like you to find himself in, but words wouldn't describe what it is to a man that has known it all his life long, and known it as I have. You might think that when the old people used to live in it, it wouldn't be so strange as it is to-day. But I can tell you it was more strange by half!

I was brought up at Tir Forgan farm, as William Hughes that lives there now knows very well, though I wasn't born there. I was born in a canal boat somewhere in England. I don't know who my mother was, and I only remember my father like a man in a dream, but I know he was English. He came to Wales with the gipsies he wasn't a gipsy, mind you! He had work on Tir Forgan farm when Owen Jones was the tenant. He

was killed by lightning working on a stack.

Owen Jones was married, but he had no children. He took me into his house, and he had me brought up like his own son, and put to school to an old Baptist minister who was blind, and took five or six scholars from the farmers round about. Owen Jones was a kind man, but I think it was through his Missis that he took me in. Dear, dear, she was stout and soft-hearted, and always crying if anything got hurt or any one was in trouble, but a rare good one and like a mother to me. The only living creature she couldn't do with was moles. She'd faint at the sight of one.

There were still people living in the Warren in those days. There was a little old man with long sandy whiskers called Tom Goliath (from the big way he liked to talk), that lived in a small poky place called Tan-yBonciau over to the north by the marshes. He drank himself to death, and no one knew till they found him months after, still sitting up in his chimney seat, though the rats had been to him. And there was a woman with her two girls in a farm called Cae'r Groesif you'd gone on down that valley with the salt pool in it you'd have seen one of the wall-ends still sticking out of the sand. Then there were the gipsies-two camps of them down there in the long valley of the marble rocks where the springs make pipes with all the

lime that's in the water. They were a brood of Hell, the terror of every one for miles round. It's a wonder to me that the police weren't made to clear them out. The fathers and grandfathers of those men had been the most to blame when ships were wrecked. But the police took no notice of them; they were afraid. They had a bad name for witchcraft; a regular job they made of it, and conjuring and fortunetelling too, and they went round to fairs, and had dishonest money in more ways from ignorant folk than I can tell you. For so much money they'd curse a man his enemies and blight crops and lame cattle and make worse mischief. I won't say how much was true and how much was moonshine and superstition. But a curse is a power of the Devil, there's no gainsaying that. You'd see if you were to look in my Bible how I've marked down the power of curses. The curse of a bad man in the name of Satan must run its course as much as the curse of a good man in the name of God. If you were to read my Bible, the way it's marked, you'd find there was no denying that

Getting to know your neighbours is a great business in these parts. There was a lot of talk about Anne Jones, that woman I told you lived on the Warren with her two girls. She and her eldest girl used to come pretty regular to the village, but not much was ever

seen of the younger one. It was said she was a changeling with the gipsies or a seafoundling. But they never knew really, and the old woman had too much sense to be drawn into talking. She was

a hard-bitten, hard-working body. She used to cut the marram grass every year to make mats out of, and get a living by, and fight the sand down on her little farm like a man. And people were always telling the tale that she had no need to work, as she had a gold-mine in her house that she might use if she pleased, only she was too much of a miser. H'm! they'll call me a miser next, though I've given enough money to their chapels in one way and an

other.

But I'll tell you how I came to go on the Warren the first time. Until I was thirteen I'd hardly set foot on it except for going on the part we call the Village Warren with a rabbit-catcher. Owen Jones was just as afraid of the gipsies as any one else, and he wouldn't let me go on the main part of it for fear of harm coming to me. So I'd never been down to the shore nor seen the sea except far off, though in winter-time you could hear the thunder of it day and night the far side of the village. I'd heard so many tales of robbers and fairies and ghosts on the Warren, I got it into my head that I must go off into it and make my way to the sea-shore. And

one morning, when it was still and hot and the fern-tips were just uncurling and all the little flowers smelling so sweet, it came over me that I must venture. I couldn't see the sea, but I could hear it moving and breathing far off. There was a ground haze that covered the Warren, and made it seem all the stranger and all the more mysterious, so that it stirred up something in me that wanted to get farther away than the farm and going to school and going to chapel. So instead of going to school I went to an old cow-shed, and hid up my slate and my book and ran off. The haze was not everywhere. It lay in long wisps like you may have seen the gorse smoke this evening, crawling, as you might say, in streaks on the sides of the hills. In places there was none at all, and the sun shone from a sky as blue as forgetme-nots. After I'd run a bit I came out into a clear space. I tell you I was thirteen then. I could read and write, and was strong and not afraid of any one, man nor boy. But I was quite ignorant of everything away from where I was brought up, and full of silly fears about fairies and witches and gipsies. I was afraid of clouds and darkness too. I got that from hearing them tell so often of how my father was killed by lightning. There you are now! hear that whine in the chimney? I told you it was going to blow ! I'd best put a

You

light. It goes dark quicker than you expect this time of year.

Murdoch got up and lit a ship's lantern that stood on a small shelf in the corner of the room. The Bank Manager made no remark, and the Only Man continued :

Well, when I got into that clearing in the haze I came over timid all at once. Larks were singing and bumble-bees were buzzing about, and, like a kind of mutter in the ground, I could hear the sea. But in spite of all that an awful seal of silence, as you might say, was set on everything. I think I wished heartily I was in the school hearing the other children gabbling, and cross old Morgan shouting at the top of his voice and fumbling with his stick. But I got better in a bit, and off I went again into the haze, whistling and putting my best foot forward. So on and on I went through clear patches and hazy patches, with the sandhills looming up and fainting away, all sorts of queer shapes. Always in front of me I could hear the sea, but I never seemed to come up with it. I think I soon stopped whistling, and fell back on my old fears. The sand was all so soft to tread and made no noise, and now and then I would pass skulls of animals, and there seemed to be bones of dead creatures everywhere. All at once I saw the sea below me from the top of a sand-cliff.

and seemed to melt into the haze all round. There were long rollers, and they came heaving in with even shining backs and burst sudden with a clang-like breaking bottles, I remember thinking,-and then shooting their white lather up the beach. That was the first time I'd seen the sea close to, and it seemed to me a fearful monster. But now I don't know but what I think the sand is a worse enemy to man. The sea gets you if it can, and drowns you quick, but the sand... Mr Brandrith, with your your permission, I'll just put up these bits of wood shutters. It's more cosy now the evenings are drawing in. In the half light you'd often think there were faces looking at you, though you're used to the Warren as I am. Of course, there's no denying the dead do walk. They're rough tack, these shutters-no fastenings, made of two margarine-boxes, but they

serve.

even

Now where are we? Oh, about the sea-well, to tell the truth, I ran away from it; not that I was afraid of the water so much as what might come out of it. You see, I'd been filled up with these tales of sea-serpents and mermaids and shaggy man-eating seahorses and what not. Yes, after I'd looked a little I started to double back. But it wasn't so easy to run straight from the noise as it had been to make for it. All my courage

quite sick with fear, for the valleys and hills looked everywhere alike. All at once I came right across my tracks. But they were funny tracks: they looked as if I had been walking on all fours. Then I saw what it was. My crossironed heels were there sure enough, but some one else had come along barefoot since I had gone by that way, and had been following me wherever I had been. That sent the blood flying over my body. I stopped breathing to listen, and I heard a voice calling from somewhere, "Con! Con!" The haze was getting lighter; you could see for three or four hundred yards in it, and overhead the bare blue sky showed through the white shreds that wafted this way and that without any wind.

I didn't know whom the voice was calling to, but I shouted back "Yes!" and waited a minute, and a little girl came running from the fog. She stopped when she saw her mistake, and said in English, "Why did you call 'Yes'? You're a boy from the village."

"Are these your footmarks?" I says to her. She came closer, walking very straight and with her eyes open wide, staring at me as if I was a wild beast. Then she looked on the ground. "No," she said. "Those are Con's footmarks. He has been following you instead of coming to play with me. I shan't be friends with him now."

I looked hard at her. She had a way with her that was not like the village girls; she seemed so independent, so striking like, yet she was not much to look at. She was dark and dumpy, with black hair and dark sallow skin. Only her mouth was very beautiful, and her eyes big. Con," she said, looking past me over my shoulder and speaking again in English, "you're bad. I'm not friends with you." I turned round, and saw a boy about my own age standing there. He was not like children of the village either. He was, in his way, more striking than the girl. He made me feel shy, and I wasn't used to feeling shy with boys. Though he was dressed in rags, there was a smack of blood and breed about him. A snake's a proper gentleman to look at, but he makes you shudder! Con was thin. His skin was as dark as the girl's. His face was small, with a very straight well-shaped nose. He had dark peculiar eyes that looked beady as a lizard's. He stared at me with his eyes screwed, as if I was something he hardly noticed, and spoke to the girl in a language I could not understand. She frowned at him. But she turned to me and smiled, showing all her teeth.

VOL. CCXVII.-NO. MCCCXI.

"I'm Mariana; what is your name? she said. "Fred Murdoch," I told her.

66

"Go and take him to play with you," said Con, talking Welsh this time. 'He's more fit to play with girls than I am.'

"He's more fit to play with me than gipsies," said the girl. And when she'd said that the boy went up to her as if he meant no harm, and then he struck her smart in the face. She took a pace back with her eyes glowing like fire, and I shouted out, You come and do that to me, you coward!

The lad spat on the sand, and said quite quiet, "You're a grand gentleman, aren't you?" There was something in his voice that was so soft and sleek that it made me in a rage, and I rushed at him and hit out for his mouth. But he had learned science and I hadn't. He hardly moved, but he dodged my blow and tripped me, and down he came on top of me and pinned me so that I couldn't move. And there he held me while I tried to get free, and mocked me, and the girl stood by and said nothing. Then he drew a knife. That made me feel funny, I can tell you, but I didn't let on, and I glared at him savage as a bull.